Digital Sobriety: Consider the Earth Before you Click

Time to kick off those New Year’s Resolutions!

Let’s talk about digital sobriety for a moment. While this term may surprise you, here’s something else to consider: internet technology is not green. Sending messages, sharing pictures, streaming videos, and downloading music has a devastating impact on the environment. And by no means is the web hosting industry eco-friendly. A tremendous amount of power is required to cool down data centers (which contain the servers that house websites and other internet data). Hyperscale data centers (Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft, etc.) doubled their energy demand from 2015 to 2021.

The information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem (a classification encompassing personal digital devices, mobile-phone networks, and televisions) accounts for more than 2% of global emissions. It could exceed 20% of the global total by 2030. Unless we start turning the tide soon, we’re headed for an environmental calamity.

“As of mid-2020, digital technologies were responsible for 4% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, a figure expected to double by 2025, and the energy required for this sector is increasing by 8% a year” (Earth.org). Data centers, telecoms networks, and end user devices like phones and laptops, use a LOT of electricity. Multiple energy and climate policy think tank studies have even found the world’s data centers emit as much CO2 as the global aviation industry annually. This fact is utterly terrifying, and it raises a point to consider: would a little more digital sobriety help the planet?

Sitting at your computer or on your phone performing single internet searches and emails adds up over time. Approximately 4.1 billion people, or 53.6% of the global population, now use the internet. The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet itself, and the systems supporting them, accounts for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions, according to some estimates. Some people have estimated that their own emails will generate 1.6kg (3.5lb) CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) in a single day.

A typical business user creates 135kg (298lbs) CO2e from sending emails every year—the equivalent of driving 200 miles in the family car. By reducing unnecessary electronic communication, we could collectively prevent a lot of carbon emissions. If every adult in the UK, for example, sent one less “thank you” email, it could save 16,433 tons of carbon a year—the equivalent to taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road!

Median desktop page transfer size has increased by 677KB between 2015 and 2019. That’s an increase of over 50%.

Watching online videos accounts for the biggest chunk of the world’s internet traffic (60%) generating 300m tons of carbon dioxide a year, or roughly 1% of global emissions. Categories of these online videos include streaming, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, “tubes” such as YouTube, and social networks. When you flip on your TV to watch Netflix, approximately half the power goes into powering the TV and half the power goes into powering Netflix.

So… maybe start practicing a little “digital sobriety”?

Send fewer marketing emails, and hand your clients and colleagues handwritten thank you cards on recycled paper instead of impersonal emails. If you need to embed videos on your website, try not to have them configured to auto-play. Next time you’re in a waiting room, how about reaching for a book instead of your phone? Instead of sending your friend that cute photo of your cat, show them the next time they come over for coffee. And rather than shopping online, how about buying from your local merchants, solving two problems at once?

Thanks for reading. Contact us if you’d like to chat about eco-friendly web design and keep checking the site for further updates. We’re very passionate about sustainable digital marketing here at Fairwind Creative!